Numbers guy, again
As a recovering engineer, it is part of my healing journey to eliminate my preoccupation with numbers but, truly, this presents a personal challenge.
For instance, I find myself fascinated with the soaring number of illegal border crossings — 5.4 million since Biden took office — plus another 1.5 million “got-aways” (cornyn.senate.gov). Moreover, the number of “paroled” migrants entering the U.S. under Biden simply dwarfs the numbers entering under both Obama and Trump (“Trump vs. Biden on immigration: 12 charts comparing U.S. border security,” washingtonpost.com).
One can only wonder at where this overwhelming number of new arrivals are going and what they are doing. And are they helping or hindering our economy?
Another attention-grabbing number is the $7 trillion increase in taxes projected by the Biden administration in 2025 (“The Biden Tax Hike Will Likely Exceed $7 Trillion,” gop-waysandmeans.house.gov) which, oddly, targets those who are relatively poor as evidenced by the fact that fully fifty percent of the audits would be directed to families making less than $25,000 (denver7.com).
Obviously, this tax hike is not about relief for the middle/lower classes but more about supporting increased exorbitant government spending and which will be “crushing for hardworking Americans struggling under Bidenomics”(“Biden’s proposed tax hike would crush workers and the economy,” thehill.com)
Lastly, some more numbers deserving of interest is our dramatically increasing poverty rate whereby some 12.4% of the population now lives in poverty which is up from 7.4% in 2021. Even more concerning is that child poverty more than doubled to 12.4% from 5.2% the year before and, obviously, these are not good numbers. (“Why poverty is rising in America,” americaninequality.substack.com)
Seems that, wherever one looks, numbers are way up.
Hopefully, come next election, Biden’s number will be up as well.
Dick Pilling
Port Angeles
(as published in the Sequim Gazette)
5/29/2024
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